Strategy 5

At Fairmont Senior High School, 54.75% of students are at Mastery or above in reading, 57.05% are in math, 40.09% are in science, and 48.70% are in social studies. While it appears that science is the area of serious need, there is a significant discrepancy in the number of students tested in comparison to the other tests. In the data, it states that 197 students were tested in science, while in the other tests the only variant in student testing is that 545 students took the math test, instead of 546 students taking the other two tests. With that being said, social studies is an area of great need in the school.

One recommended instructional intervention for Social Studies is to activate prior knowledge. One method of this is to make predictions. This strategy asks students use text features such as headlines and bold faced terms to make predictions about what the content will be in the textbook.

A video commentary of this from Sue Wimsatt can be found at: http://www.jackson.k12.ky.us/readingstrategies/more/video/wimsatt3fix.htm

My question is, how does the emphasis on prior knowledge and the implementation of the strategy to "make predictions" increase the test scores for Social Studies?

To assess this strategy, you could utilize the long passage essay portions of WestTest preparation materials for Social Studies. First, you would give the students the test as a pre-test. After they learn how to utilize the strategy, a second version of the test could be given (a different test, but the same format). In that sense, the teacher implementing the strategy could see whether the "make predictions" strategy was efficient in raising test scores in their classroom.

Action Research Activity

1. What is the title of the project?

Making Meaning through Written Response

2. What is the problem?

The researchers used two driving questions for this project- “How do reading journals guide instruction to improve student learning?” and “How do readers with varying abilities respond to literature?” The researchers, Rosemary Barilla and Karen Dreyfuss, wanted to learn more about “what students think about while they read”. Barilla and Dreyfuss began this research with the goal of gaining a deeper understanding of reading comprehension.

3. Describe the instructional intervention.

Barilla and Dreyfuss created a three week study where reading journals were used as an assessment tool in a 5^th and 7^th grade classroom during novel studies. The whole class read one particular novel, and would respond several times a week. Prompts alternated between student selected responses and those chosen by the teacher. Teachers took into consideration journals from six students in each class- two lower level readers, two average readers, and two high level readers. Student responses were analyzed according to categories that teachers saw emerge, and documented their own observations. Students additionally completed questionnaires about their understandings and preferences about the reading journal.

4. What kind of strategy is the instructional intervention?

Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers                         

5. What evidence is presented that the strategy will work?

• Learning increases when teachers focus their questions on content that is most important, not what they think will be most interesting to students (Alexander, Kulikowich, & Schulze, 1994; Risner, Nicholson, & Webb, 1994).
• Higher-level questions that ask students to analyze information result in more learning than simply asking students to recall information. (Redfield & Rousseau, 1981). However, teachers are more apt to ask lower-order questions (Fillippone, 1998; Mueller, 1973).
• Advance organizers, including graphic ones, help students learn new concepts and vocabulary (Stone, 1983). Presenting information graphically as well as symbolically in an advance organizer reinforces vocabulary learning and supports reading skills. (Brookbank Grover, Kullberg, & Strawser, 1999; Moore & Readence 1984).

6. How will data be collected to determine if the strategy will work?

They had students do reading journals and fill out questionnaires, and the teachers observed and reflected upon the class time.

7. How was the data analyzed?

The data was analyzed in three ways. They were analyzed based on reading journals, teacher reflections, and student questionnaires. Reading journals: The categories mentioned in step three are: summary, interpretation, personal connection, literary elements, opinions and wonderings/predictions. They looked at what each level of reader’s reflections fell into. Barilla and Dreyfuss also took their own reflections in journals and had students fill out questionnaires about the journals.

8. What were the results?

They found that low level reader entries tended to be simple in structure, and usually fell into the categories of summary or opinion. Average level students had entries that were longer, but still very simple, while the entries of high level reader entries analyzed the literature and included each of the categories almost daily. The high level readers also provided text support for their ideas. During the teacher reflections, they noticed two things. They noticed that the higher level readers exhibited higher levels of thinking and caused the teachers to wonder what they could do to have all of their students reach that level. They also noticed that student entries were not consistent with their capacity. The teachers wondered about student motivation and if they would be able to increase the quality of entries. The questionnaires showed that students had a general understanding of the journals’ purpose, while higher level readers tended to have a deeper understanding of the teachers’ intention. Low and average level readers had a mixed preference for the type of prompts, and high level readers had confidence in their own prompts. The last thing that they found was that reading journals facilitated discussion among the students.